Locaboating along Canal du Centre and the rivers Seille and Saone

Earlyish start for packing, shopping and a maxi taxi at 9.30 to take us the 30 km or so down to St Leger sur Dheune. All worked pretty well this time. For once we managed not to stop the supermarket, although Choco did set off a security alarm as he exited through an entry barrier. Shopping was reasonably light for this trip; we are travelling in an area with plenty of small villages, so we will do a bit of replenishing and dining out along the way.

Our Pennichette 1120 R this time is Coeuillon, we’ve stayed with the style of boat that we’ve used on the past three trips, it's quite roomy and good in both sun and rain.

We did glance at one of the new Linssen designs, a more traditional launch rather our bargey style, less glamorous 1120R. We loaded up, completed all the formalities, contracts, briefing for the voyage, briefing for the boat and we were away before lunch which was pretty good.

The crew settled back into locking drill very quickly, with four locks in the first four km. Ann on the stern, Vikki forard hand and Choco doing the rover role, going ashore at each lock. I get to hang onto the wheel.

Foraging is not so good in springtime, plenty of flowers but not much in the eating line.

We did see one rhubarb plant, but didn’t deviate to harvest it on the basis that if there’s one there is probably more. There wasn’t so we missed out on rhubarb pie. The area we went through initially was the southern end of the Burgundy wine region, Cote Chalonnaise, and by the time we get to Macon we will be in the Maconnaise area, so the opportunities to taste local produce will be good. Quite a mix as we travel with livestock, especially charolais, vineyards, mustard and other crops, probably wheat and barley.

We stopped at Santeney, a small village with lots of cellars. However we found most were small and closed, I guess with the owners out in the vineyards doing their spring work. To do a sampling we needed make a phone call and make an appointment but that’s really a bit difficult to organise. We cycled around the village and the grounds of the chateau.

Our second stop was at our overnight port Chagny. We had a reservation for the evening at a local restaurant, Lameloise, reputedly one of the best in France and a three star Michelin. This was originally scheduled for Tuesday, but they are closed then, so we rearranged our programme to suit. To say the meal was very, very good or excellent is an understatement. The pictures can carry the day, my only comment is that the range of tastes was superb.

We had the 3 plat menu, which gave us a Charolais beef dish, followed by John Dory, followed by baby lamb. See these first three pictures.

They were all delightful, but for our degustation meal we had plate after plate after plate of amuse-bouche. These delights included beetroot marinated trout, garlic snails in black breadcrumbs, pate fois de gras lollipops with mango, quail egg with mushroom and lots more. In fact we had about twenty creations to taste.

Then there were the cheeses - a huge cheese trolley, pick whatever you fancy which is then presented to you in the  best order for eating.

Followed by the desserts.

I was keen to see the bill so we could work out how much the aperitif champagne had cost. It was a 2006 Amour de Deutz and turned out that is was a mere 30 Euros a glass!! We are dining here just once and we've come a long way to do it!

Many of you will know the story of our birthday dinner at Epernay in 2014, 65yrs  for me and 63 for Choco, and we (Ann and I) spent my first month's superannuation on that one ie about 350 Euros. This time we eclipsed that and it was 530 Euros for the pair of us.

We went back into the village next morning to buy le pain and some lunch and dinner meals. We bought a 2 kg chunk of veal ribeye which looked like it might just fit in our oven. Lunch meats are generally jambon, saucisson sec, pate en crout, or other terrine type things, so we picked up a few of those and the staff entered into the spirit of the occasion and had us sampling a range of different options. The purchases were all made at the butcher's shop, le pain also.

Our next planned stop was Fragnes just upstream from Chalon sur Soane, and we departed after lunch, on down the Canal du Centre. This was a busy afternoon for the locking crew. Eleven locks in quick succession, some only a few hundred metres apart. Anxious lockkeepers were in attendance for the first few, and there was a lot of apprehension. They told us that a 50 tonne behemouth was coming up the canal and we would meet it between locks 28 and 29. “Tres dangereux”. 

It all passed pretty easily, and while it was a big boat we have passed several that large and bigger in our trips on the canals. I remembered the rule from Boatmaster, "small ships keep out of the way of big ships"

Uneventful time at Fragnes, and we got away early next day with the intention of staying in Chalon sur Saone, a large town with a biggish marina. 

We were lucky in fact to get a berth for the night, many following us were turned away. “Complet!” We got to the market to purchase food for lunches and dinner, and managed to get le pain before the shops closed at noon for a couple of hours. It’s a difficult system to get used to for travellers, but as the shopkeepers are open until 7-8 pm, the break in the middle of the day makes sense. We walked the town and took in the sights. As in Dijon, they had a ‘follow the brass plaques’ walk which took in the major sights. Again lovely Burgundian architecture. A peaceful anchorage with a great view.

We had an early morning visitor on the pier, a French snail, but one snail between four didn’t sound like an appetiser so he was duly liberated.

We did a supermarket visit before heading off again to stay at Tournus. One of the highlights of this part of the trip down is the river lock at Ormes. This is a monster lock, 180m long and about 15m wide

It’s only a small drop, just 1 m with the river in flood, but our boat and a companion were like a couple of little corks bobbing around in it. Lots of big boats on the Saone, both river cruisers and barges, complete with a couple of cars on the stern.

Glorious weather so lunch on the back deck was the daily practice. (Fewer baguette crumbs in the cabin.)

Tournus has the Romanesque St Philibert Abbey with a fantastic wooden organ, which was operating as we visited.

There was a free concert in the abbey that night. But we made do with the practice session we heard during our visit. The abbey had a long history, and was sold prior to the Revolution, after the order ran out of abbots. That was a stroke of good fortune, as it was ten years before the Revolution so the state didn’t get its mitts on the place. Quite recently restoration work uncovered these 12C mosaics on the floor.

There was also had a self-guided walk around the old town, which highlighted parts dating back to Roman times, such as the street layout and a Roman water pump.

Tournus was a popular trading post in medieval days, a town with a lot of history. You can see the low windows in the houses in some streets, built so the shutters could be lowered to form a shop counter.

We were entertained as we arrived back at the boat by the arrival of one of the huge river cruising ships. The one that arrived was 140 m long and 13 m wide and carried 170 or so passengers. The small boat mooring facility was getting pretty crowded with lots of rafting up by late arriving boats. 

I can report that canal boat marinas are equally as interesting and entertaining as launching ramps for boats at home. You see some hilarious behaviour and extremes of competence and incompetence in the skippers of various vessels.

We voted for Toulouse sausage, with white asparagus and a salad for dinner. The 2 kg 33 Euro Bresse chicken we bought in anticipation of our visit to its AOC location at Louhans, can wait until we arrive there. It’s pretty big so will create leftovers which have to be managed and we already have a bit of a backlog of lunch stuff in the fridge.

We slipped away on Friday morning to get a good start for our Louhans overnighter, about 43 km away on a side branch tributary of the Saone, the Seille River. We can travel downstream in the Saone river at a current assisted 12 km/hr, compared to 6-8 km/hr in the canals, which are speed restricted to minimize damage to the sides from wakes.

Duly made Louhans at around 2 30 pm. Not many locks today, just four on La Seille, but all manual which means they take quite a while and require rover Choco, to wind the gates open and shut. We did stop at a little town called Cuisery and had a coffee. This is a small town specialising in books, but we decided to have a look at that on the way back. Quite a bit of bird life, but many more fishermen. Some of the campsites are very elaborate, and the array of rods is impressive; everyone has multiples, but some have as many as 12 set up in batches.

They have a great range of nets too, some mounted like upside down umbrellas on a boat, some like whitebait or eel nets as an adjunct to the very long rods they use.

Louhans is another old town with a beautiful church and an old hospital, well-kept gardens and houses, and a main street with 157 arches and arcade-style sidewalks (The first of which were built in medieval times).

This is the base for one of the canal boat companies, so it ended up being a pretty busy with customers finishing their hire on Saturday morning. We had a pleasant evening playing cards, after our dinner of the expensive AOC Bresse chicken. The meat was darker than our supermarket chickens at home and very tasty. Huge drumsticks: turkey–sized. Enough left for a cold salad tomorrow night. We had passed a chicken farm on our way up the river. Very happy chickens running around in the grass, by the river, foraging away, which explains the darker meat.

We travelled back down the river on Saturday; lots more traffic, but generally very well behaved. Had a look at Cuisery on the way down, not tempted by the books, so after lunch on board we cruised on to La Truchere at the mouth of La Seille. That was to be home for the night before we went back onto the Saone tomorrow for the final leg down to Macon. La Truchere has lots of wetlands surrounding the town, but we opted for a walk around town rather than a ride in the country. The gardens here really impressed us. Full of spring vegetables – lettuce, radishes, spring onions, courgettes and artichokes. Pretty crowded anchorage again by the time we got back, you could almost share the toothpaste.

The lockkeeper turned up on time and we headed south again, travelling at about 12 km/hour and no locks to interrupt progress. Our mobile wifi hasn’t been operating for the last couple of days, it was only able to find a 2G network which doesn’t support much in the way of internet connectivity, and when it found a 3G network it often wasn't much better. However as we got nearer Macon we found 3G+ and then 4G so there was a chance to have a bit of Mothers’ Day contact with home and put a couple of things onto FB.

As we approached Macon we saw lots of storks nesting high in trees and large hawks soaring above, or perched nearby them waiting for opportunities.

We tied up in the Locaboat facility at about 11 30 and headed into town for a look around and a coffee.

We found the town May 8 VE Day commemoration in progress as we cycled into centre ville, and stopped to watch and listen to the band.

This was the VE day celebration, marking the end of war in Europe on May 8 1945. The area we have travelled in was very active with the Resistance and in our journey we have noted in several towns plaques on walls commemorating places where Frenchmen were killed by the Germans/ Nazis/ Gestapo. Very strongly worded too.

Our coffee shop appeared a bit later and we sat with the other patrons, mainly Middle Eastern men enjoying the sun and the coffee. This initial recce took us past Gare Macon Ville where we’ll depart tomorrow for Lyon and then onto a train to Girona in Spain. And it's thanks again to Locaboat experience no 4, and another great week with Choco and Vikki!

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